From
August 1935 to January 1936 a festive hall was erected in the
Reichskanzlei's garden, which had an air-raid shelter. This was to serve
Adolf Hitler as a private bunker. On January 18, 1943, Hitler ordered
the construction of another bunker, which was connected to the air-raid
shelter, which had a much stronger construction. The air-raid shelter
became the pre-bunker of the new main bunker, which was begun in April
1944. On January 16, 1945, Hitler returned to Berlin and moved into his
living quarters in the Imperial Chancellery. These were destroyed during
the most severe air attack on Berlin during the Second World War on 3
February 1945. Hitler then moved to the commandant bunkers, which he had
used until then only to sleep and during the air raids. In the course
of the next few weeks, Hitler also transferred all his activities to the
bunker, which is why his staff, his adjutants, the commando command and
Martin Bormann were essentially there. From March 7, 1945, Eva Braun
also lived permanently in the bunker and, beside Hitler's room, moved
into a room with a dressing room. On April 22, Joseph and Magda Goebbels
followed with their six children. While Goebbels lived in the main
bunker, Magda Goebbels and her six children lived in the Vorbunker. On
April 29, 1945 Hitler wrote his political and personal testament in the
bunker. Thereafter, Hitler and Eva Braun married. On April 30, 1945,
they took their lives in Hitler's living and working space in the
bunker. Their corpses were poured over with gasoline and burned in front
of the emergency exit of the bunker in the garden of the New
Reichskanzlei. On the following day, on the 1st of May, Joseph and Magda
Goebbels took the life of the bunkers' emergency exit. Previously their
children were probably killed in their sleeping room in the Vorbunker
by the hand of Magda Goebbels with Zyankali. Hans Krebs, last chief of
the General Staff of the Army, and the last military commander-in-chief,
Wilhelm Burgdorf, were shot in the bunkers' card room. Franz Schädle,
chief of the commando commando, also took refuge in the bunker. In the
night from the 1st to the 2nd of May the remaining inmates left the
bunker. On May 2, General Helmuth Weidling declared the capitulation of
Berlin, whereupon the Red Army discovered and took possession of the now
abandoned bunker.

The setting in which Hitler played out the last scene of all was well suited to the end of so strange a history. The Chancellery air raid shelter, in which the events of 22 April had taken place, was buried fifty feet beneath the ground, and built in two storeys covered with a massive canopy of reinforced concrete. The lower of the storeys formed the Fuhrerbunker. It was divided into eighteen small rooms grouped on either side of a central passageway. Half of this passage was closed by a partition and used for the daily conferences. A suite of six rooms was set aside for Hitler and Eva Braun. Eva had a bed-sitting-room, a bathroom, and a dressing-room; Hitler a bedroom and a study, the sole decoration in which was the portrait of Frederick the Great. A map-room used for small conferences, a telephone exchange, a power-house, and guard rooms took up most of the rest of the space, but there were two rooms for Goebbels (formerly occupied by Morell) and two for Stumpfegger, Brandt's successor as Hitler's surgeon. Frau Goebbels, who insisted on remaining with her husband, together with her six children, occupied four rooms on the floor above, where the kitchen, servants' quarters and dining-hall were also to be found. Other shelters had been built nearby. One housed Bormann, his staff and the various Service officers; another Mohnke, the S.S. commandant of the Chancellery, and his staff.The physical atmosphere of the bunker was oppressive, but this was nothing compared to the pressure of the psychological atmosphere. The incessant air-raids, the knowledge that the Russians were now in the city, nervous exhaustion, fear, and despair produced a tension bordering on hysteria, which was heightened by proximity to a man whose changes of mood were not only unpredictable but affected the lives of all those in the shelter.Hitler had been living in the bunker for some time. Such sleep as he got in the last month appears to have been between eight and eleven o'clock in the morning. As soon as the mid-morning air attacks began, Hitler got up and dressed. He had a horror of being caught either lying down or undressed.

Schematic diagram of the Führerbunker. There were actually two bunkers that were connected together: the older Vorbunker and the newer Führerbunker. The latter was located over eight metres beneath the garden of the old Reich Chancellery building at Wilhelmstraße 77, about 120 metres north of the new Chancellery building, which had the address Voßstraße 6. The Vorbunker was located beneath the large hall behind the old Chancellery, which was connected to the new Chancellery. The Führerbunker was located somewhat lower than the Vorbunker and south-west of it. The two bunkers were connected via sets of stairs set at right angles.

My students from the Bavarian International School at the site of Hitler's bunker near where his body was burned during our school trip in 2011. The sign you see was erected on June 8, 2006. One of Hitler's bodyguards, Rochus Misch, apparently one of the last people living who was in the bunker at the time of Hitler's suicide, was on hand for the ceremony. From August 1935 to January 1936 a festive hall was erected in the Reichskanzlei's garden, which had an air-raid shelter. This was to serve Adolf Hitler as a private bunker. [1] On January 18, 1943, Hitler ordered the construction of another bunker, which was connected to the air-raid shelter, which had a much stronger construction. The air-raid shelter became the pre-bunker of the new main bunker, which was begun in April 1944. [2] On January 16, 1945, Hitler returned to Berlin and moved into his living quarters in the Imperial Chancellery. [3] These were destroyed during the most severe air attack on Berlin during the Second World War on 3 February 1945. Hitler then moved to the commandant bunkers, which he had used until then only to sleep and during the air raids. [4] In the course of the next few weeks, Hitler also transferred all his activities to the bunker, which is why his staff, his adjutants, the commando command and Martin Bormann were essentially there. [5] Since March 7, 1945, Eva Braun also lived permanently in the bunker and, beside Hitler's room, moved into a room with a dressing room. [6] On April 22, Joseph and Magda Goebbels followed with their six children. While Goebbels lived in the main bunker, Magda Goebbels and her six children lived in the Vorbunker. [7] On 29 April 1945 Hitler wrote his political and personal testament in the bunker. Thereafter, Hitler and Eva Braun married. [8] On April 30, 1945, they took their lives in Hitler's living and working space in the bunker. Their corpses were poured over with gasoline and burned in front of the emergency exit of the bunker in the garden of the New Reichskanzlei [9] On the following day, on the 1st of May, Joseph and Magda Goebbels took the life of the bunkers' emergency exit. Previously their children were probably killed in their sleeping room in the Vorbunker by the hand of Magda Goebbels with Zyankali. [10] Hans Krebs, last chief of the General Staff of the Army, and the last military commander-in-chief, Wilhelm Burgdorf, were shot in the bunkers' card room. Franz Schädle, chief of the commando commando, also took refuge in the bunker. [11] In the night from the 1st to the 2nd of May the remaining inmates left the bunker. On May 2, General Helmuth Weidling declared the capitulation of Berlin, whereupon the Red Army discovered and took possession of the now abandoned bunker. There is a children's playground now on the spot where Hitler's and Braun's bodies were burnt, immediately behind the bunker entrance. The ruins of both the old and new Chancellery buildings were levelled by the Soviets between 1945 and 1949 but the bunker largely survived, although some areas were partially flooded. In 1947 the Soviets tried to blow up the bunker but only the separation walls were damaged. In 1959 the East German government also tried to blast the bunker, apparently without much effect. Since it was near the Berlin Wall, the site was undeveloped and neglected until after reunification. During the construction of residential housing and other buildings on the site in 1988–89 several underground sections of the old bunker were uncovered by work crews and were for the most part destroyed. In May 1995, the regional parliament of Berlin decided to lock up the remnants of the bunker and build houses for representatives from the Bundesländer on top of it, rejecting a proposal to retain it as a monument. The entrance and parts of the bunker have been destroyed, mostly by the Russians right after the end of the war, but there should be quite a bit left from the actual Führerbunker, which had been 15 metres underground and protected by metres of concrete.

The sofa on which Hitler and his wife committed suicide, with Americans examining the scene, the blood noticeable. According to the June 18, 1946 report of Colonel Osipov, this sofa

is stuffed, made out of pine and was covered with a white cloth, with drawings of clear and dark brown flowers. The cover is torn and it maintained itself only on the left side in contact with the wall, between Hitler's study and bedroom. ( ..... ) From the detailed examination of the sofa: on the superior face of the right arm are visible for a length of 28.5 centimetres numerous dark- brown and red-brown splashes and some brown tending to black stains. ( ....) There are also numerous spots of grey colour and of various forms noticeable, owing to the diffusion of fungous moulds. On the internal face of the arm are well visible for a length of 36 centimetres dry stripes of pale reddish-brown colour that run for almost its entire thickness. (.... ) The spot and the splashes on the sofa and the stripes on the walls have been noticed and examined for verifying their haematic content.

Re-enaction of the disposal of Hitler and Braun's bodies for the Soviet film Osvobozhdenie beside a photograph of site where Hitler and Braun's bodies were cremated from Victory in Europe: From D- day to V-E Day by Max Hastings. The final photo shows LIFE war correspondent Percy Knauth (left) sifting through dirt and debris in the shallow trench in the garden of the Reich Chancellery where the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun are believed to have been burned after their suicides.

The garden entrance to Hitler's bunker in 1946 when the bunker was flooded, perhaps to prevent exploration underground, and as depicted in another re-enacting of the disposal of Hitler's body from Der Untergang

The same entrance on the right. The depression in the ground is where Hitler's body was supposedly cremated. After the war the Red Army tried to blow up the bunker. The above-ground superstructures (venting towers and emergency exit) and the inner walls of the bunker were severely damaged as seen here. In June 1959, the East German government initiated another attempt to make an unsuccessful attempt, and the ruins of the above-ground were covered by a mound of earth. In the course of the construction of large-panel residential blocks on the western side of the former Otto-Grotewohl-Strasse (now Wilhelmstraße) in 1988 and 1989, the steel baskets of the main bunker were removed together with about half of their outer walls during the deepening of the terrain . The Vorbunker was completely removed. Because of the high dismantling costs, the floor plate and parts of the outer walls remained in the ground. The place where today the remains of the bunker are in the ground is marked with an information sign at the corner Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße. In the area of ​​the bunker is now a parking lot

The site in 1988 before the construction work. That year it was decided to build a new great quarter in the historical area and to clean out from it all the rests of the second world war, including the Vorbunker and the Führerbunker. According to Pietro Guido, "the whole area was flattened, great excavations started for the foundations of the buildings and to discover the rests of the two bunkers and relative tunnels of connection." By June, the two bunkers were already unearthed and rose in their massive structures. The demolition of the bunkers had to happen without witnesses and the area was put under the police control. Once destroyed and covered in earth, the two bunkers had to dissolve from from the memory of Berliners and amateur historians. No information was provided to visitors; instead the ground had to be equipped with parking lots, flower-beds and playing-fields, new trees and pedestrian paths.

The same position in summer of 2007 and 2011 with footage of the site. In 1964, Groucho Marx went to East Berlin with a group that included his radio show director Robert Dwan and his 16-year-old daughter Judith Dwan Hallet. They visited the village of Dornum, where his mother Minnie had been born. and discovered that all the Jewish graves there had been obliterated by the Nazis. Groucho then hired a car with a chauffeur, and told the driver to take the group to the bunker where Hitler was said to have committed suicide. Wearing his trademark beret he climbed the debris and then launched himself, unsmiling, into a frenetic Charleston dance routine. The dance on Hitler's supposed grave lasted a couple of minutes. "Nobody applauded," Hallet recalled. "Nobody laughed."

Photograph purporting to show Hitler's remains and the site where his body was cremated today

Stalin had been informed by Zhukov that Hitler had committed suicide on 30 April. His body and that of his new wife Eva Braun had been dug up in the garden, in the spot designated by Admiral Voss. As the Smersh soldiers were not certain that they had the right bodies, they reburied them, only finally exhuming them on 5 May, when together with the bodies of the Goebbels children, the chief of staff General Krebs and a couple of dogs, they were sent to their HQ at Berlin-Buch as important trophies. The autopsies were performed the next day. Contradictory evidence made the officers concerned reluctant to send in a final report on the cause of Hitler’s death. The Soviet authorities preferred the version that had him taking poison – a cowardly way out. Shooting oneself was a braver, more soldierly death.

When the Soviets’ Operation Myth was launched in 1946 to establish the real sequence of events leading to Hitler’s death, some of Hitler’s personal staff were brought back to Berlin and the bunker, in order to point out the precise details of the suicide and subsequent burning in the garden. The bones, for the time being, were stored in Magdeburg. Of particular importance were the objects in Hitler’s personal collection. For them an aircraft was laid on as Stalin wanted his bones examined by his foremost experts. The Führer’s skull was eventually put into a paper bag and deposited in the State Archives.

Footage of Hitler's last public appearance during the battle of Berlin on his birthday outside the bunker (commentary in English and Greek subtitles)

Hitler and his entourage emerged from the bunker for what would be his last moments above ground, breathing the fresh air of the country which his war was now subjecting to utter ruin and destruction. In the garden of the Reichschancellery, the Fuhrer reviewed the troops of the ϟϟ Frundsberg Division and a group of Hitler Youth. The beaming leader of the Hitlerjugend, Artur Axmann, presented the unit and singled out some of those present as having 'recently distinguished themselves at the front'. Those boy-soldiers were decorated by Hitler, and all received a handshake from Germany's 'saviour'. Though his speech was full of wooden optimism about the Soviets' imminent 'greatest defeat yet', he was clearly physically debilitated. 'Everyone was shocked at the Führer's appearance,' Axmann later remembered. 'He walked with a stoop. His hands trembled. But it was surprising how much will power and determination still radiated from this man.' Newsclips filmed by the Nazi authorities in fact reveal a man who appeared to be on the verge of collapse.

That afternoon, in the ruined Reich Chancellery garden, the Fiihrer worked his way slowly down a line of Hitler Youth, some of whom had received the Iron Cross for attacking Soviet tanks. Hitler could not present any medals himself. To prevent his left arm shaking too obviously, he walked gripping it behind his back with his right hand. For brief moments, he could afford to release it. With what looked like the intensity of the repressed paedophile, he lingered to cup a cheek and tweak an ear, unconscious of his leering smile.

The same scene recreated for the film "Der Untergang" (The Downfall). This scene concerns twelve year old Peter Kranz during the Battle of Berlin in April 1945 who then receives an iron cross from Hitler for taking out two Soviet tanks.

Outside Churchill's own 'bunker' in London with Churchill seeing the ruins of Hitler's for himself on July 16 1945 just before the Potsdam conference...

...and sitting in a damaged chair taken out from Hitler's bunker

War correspondents are shown are shown the grave where Hitler's charred body was alleged to be buried and the site today with my students.

Hitler's wax figure in a mock-up of the bunker at Madame Tussaud’s museum in Berlin.

Photographs by William Vandivert for Life:

Two of the twenty or so pages of notes that Vandivert typed up for LIFE's editors back in New York, describing not only the pictures that were taken on each roll of film, but also the mood and the atmosphere pervading his experience of examining Hitler's bunker and the Reich Chancellery grounds. (An example of Vandivert's terse, vivid notations: "... view of chancellery palace ... This is completely bombed, burned, and shelled to hell.")

A new view of a photograph that appeared, heavily cropped, in LIFE of Hitler's command centre in the bunker, partially burned by retreating German troops beside a photo almost too-perfectly symbolic of Berlin in the last weeks of April, 1945 -- features a crushed globe and a bust of Hitler lying amid rubble and debris outside the Reich Chancellery building. Of the last image, Vandivert's notes simply stated: "mouldy ϟϟ cap lying in water on floor of sitting room."

This first image not only captures the chaotic state of Hitler's bunker when Vandivert made his way there in 1945, but also features an item that recalls the wanton gangsterism and greed that characterized Nazi rule: a 16th-century painting looted from a museum in Milan. The last two show that the Russians themselves left little intact or unmolested, with the final photo showing Russian soldiers and an unidentified civilian struggling to move a large bronze Nazi Party eagle which once loomed over a doorway of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. "They are loading this on to a truck," Vandivert typed in his notes, "to be carried away as a trophy."Remains of the interior

East German colour video from circa 1988: STASI (East German Intelligence) cameramen enter the Führerbunker for the first (and the last) time since it was closed in 1945. This was filmed just before East German army men blew out the entrances to the place with high explosive to allow the building of a parking lot for nearby condominiums upon it.

A piece of skull with a bullet hole through it that Russians claimed was Hitler's actually came from a woman, scientists at the University of Connecticut concluded. The cranium fragment is part of a collection of Hitler artefacts preserved by Soviet intelligence in the months after Hitler and Eva Braun reportedly committed suicide. The collection, now in the Russian State Archive in Moscow, also includes bloodstained pieces of the sofa where Hitler reportedly shot himself after taking a cyanide pill. The artefacts were put on public display in 2000. Nick Bellantoni said his initial forensic exam of the skull fragment showed it didn't match what he knew of Hitler's biology: "The bone was very small and thin, and normally male bones are much more robust in our species. I thought it probably came from a woman or a younger man." Bellantoni then took several pinhead-size pieces of the skull fragment and swabs of the blood stains back to the university for analysis.Linda Strausbaugh, a professor of molecular and cell biology, determined that the DNA came from a 20- to 40-year-old woman. The skull fragment could have come from Braun, but to know that, the lab would need samples of her DNA. Also, the DNA samples were very degraded, making identification unlikely. Witnesses never reported Braun being shot in the head, Bellantoni said, and she is thought to have died of cyanide poisoning. "This person, with a bullet hole coming out the back of the head, would have been shot in the face, in the mouth or underneath the chin," he said. "It would have been hard for them to miss that."DNA from the bloodstain swabs showed at least some of it came from a man, Strausbaugh said. "The DNA is relatively degraded and we don't have a full range of markers that we'd like to have," she said. "My gut feeling is he did commit suicide there, and maybe the blood sample we found is his," Bellantoni said. "What this does is it raises a question: If this is not him who is it?" he later added. "And, two, what really happened there?

No doubts about the remains of Goebbels...

On the evening of 1 May, after giving poison to his children, Goebbels shot his wife and himself in the Chancellery Garden. The bodies were set fire to by Goebbels's adjutant, but the job was badly done, and the charred remains were found next day by the Russians. After Goebbels's death the Fiihrerbunker was set on fire.

The Russians found the splinters of a poison phial in the right side of Dr Goebbels’ jaw. Magda too had swallowed poison. Like Hitler, he had probably also shot himself. Schwägermann certainly heard one shot—others heard two; on Schwägermann’s orders Ochs fired two coups de grace into the motionless bodies. The S.S. officers made only cursory attempts to burn the remains. A Walther pistol was found near them a few days later when the Russians tipped the two corpses onto a red and gold door ripped out of the chancellery building. The corpses were loaded onto a truck and driven away. There was one feature about the little doctor, even in death, that caught the Soviet pathologist’s attention. His fists were raised, as though spoiling for a fight. Perhaps, somewhere, for Dr Joseph Goebbels the dialectical battle was already beginning anew.

Irving (934) Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich

Hitler and Goebbels sharing a meal in the bunker with re-enactment of the Goebbels' suicide from Der Untergang.Site of Hitler's Chancellery

On January 11, 1938, Hitler, stating that Bismarck's Old Chancellery was "fit for a soap company," not as headquarters of a Greater German Reich, officially commissioned Albert Speer, general construction inspector, with a new building along the entire Vossstrasse, which corresponds to a building front of 421 meters in length. The plans had begun as early as 1934, and from 1935 the 18 buildings of the street were bought up piece by piece. The Palais Borsig on Vossstraße 1, which had also been in Reichsbesitz since 1934, was not demolished but integrated into the new building. The building plans were realised by Hans Peter Klinke. On the other hand, building Vossstraße 2-10 was demolished until 1937. This also included the Bavarian embassy (number 3), the Ministry of Justice (number 4/5) and the Württemberg embassy (number 10). It was only with the official award of the building contract to Albert Speer that the buildings west of Vossstrasse 11-19 (including the Gauleitung Groß-Berlin of the Nazi party and the Saxon embassy) were demolished. Beginning at the beginning of 1938, work on the completion of the New Reich Chancellery was carried out with a view to completing it in time for the annual reception of diplomats on January 7, 1939. Hitler
demanded grand halls and salons which "will make an impression on
people" and gave Speer a blank cheque - the cost of the project was
immaterial - and over 4,000 workers toiled in shifts, so the work could
be accomplished round-the-clock. The immense construction was "finished"
48 hours ahead of schedule, and earned Speer a reputation as a good
organiser, which, with Hitler's fondness for Speer, led him to become
Armaments Minister and director of forced labour during the war.
Interior fittings dragged on well into the war, and in the end it cost
over 90 Million Reichsmarks, (well over one billion US dollars today),
and hosted the ministries of the Reich. However, it was not possible to complete all the works. Further construction work continued until the early 1940s. The construction of the bunkers, which was not provided for in the original plans, began only in 1943. He was not under the New Reich Chancellery, but together with other air-raids used by Hitler in the garden of the Old Reich Chancellery (Wilhelmstrasse 77). The New Reichskanzlei had in 1938 also air-raid shelters, but these were visited by persons from the surrounding area. The construction of the Reichskanzlei cost a total of 90 million reichsmarks, which corresponds to current inflation of around 370 million euros.

Postcard from just after the war, and from our 2011 school trip

Erich Merker's 1940 painting of the building of the Reichschancellery and the actual construction drawing from two years earlier.

Front and back cover with some images below

Schematic plans of the New Reichschancellery

With the conception of the New Reich Chancellery, Speer was mainly concerned with the architectural representation of the power and glory of the leader and the empire. Thus, with the famous "Diplomaten-Route", he created a magnificent, long-stretched, 300-metre-long route from the monumental "Ehrenhof", through a porch to the "Mosaiksaal", the "Round Hall", the "Marmorgalerie" ending at the "Empfangssaal"- the Office of the Führer. This architectural concept was based on the Baroque Enfilade, the prestigious path leading to an absolute ruler by means of precious rooms. Speer and Hitler, however, wanted to surpass the baroque splendour. The length of the "Marmorgalerie" was twice as long as the "Mirror Hall of Versailles". Finally, the New Reich Chancellery should impressively underline the claim to German domination in Europe. Hitler's study was the largest and most magnificent hall in the building. It had a floor area of ​​nearly 400 square meters at an altitude of nearly ten meters. Only the finest materials were used: dark red marble, rosewood and rosewood for the walls, rosewood for the coffered ceiling, and Ruhpolding stone slabs for the floor. The generously dimensioned desk was decorated with marquetry and the plate covered with red leather. The cardboard table had a five-meter-long and 1.60-meter-wide marble slab made of one piece. On the walls hung precious paintings in a magnificent setting according to Hitler's art taste. Hitler used this office mainly for purposes of representation.

Albert Speer commissioned numerous artists and artisans to design the new Chancellery. Thus the furniture of the power centre was specially made for this construction by hand. This also applied to silver cutlery and tableware, tapestries and curtains.

The view from the subway station into Vossstrasse. On the right, the Borsig Palace with the Reichskanzlei behind it. The photo on the right from 1946 is looking down Wilhelmstrasse towards the corner of Vosstrasse from Hitler's balcony on the Reichskanzlei. The right shows the entrance to the courtyard.

The same view today, taken summer 2007.

German newsreels showing crowds greeting Hitler in the entrance to the courtyard of the Old Reich Chancellery on his 50th birthday on April 20th, 1939 and, on the right, crowds saluting Hitler on the Chancellery balcony after his triumphant return by train from France, July 6, 1940. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring stands beside him.

The main entrance to one of the wings of the Reich Chancellery building. The building was heavily damaged during the war with the remnants being destroyed not long after the war.

Left: The garden courtyard with the cafeteria visible on the right.Right:The interior of the dining hall.

The main entrance to the Reichschancellery by night.

Left: The arched hallway running in front of the dining hall.Right: A small courtyard inside the chancellery.

Virtual Tour of Hitler's Headquarters

The pictures below are based on over 800 photographs and documents from public and private archives in Berlin displaying a perfectly accurate rendering of much of the architecture, along with some interiors, of the Third Reich. Over 2 million objects -- including fallen tree branches in the courtyards, swastika-bedecked chairs in the dining room, books, pipes, papers -- and 600 buildings are presented with stunning visual clarity. The creator, Christoph Neubauer, used the original architectural plans and compared them with photographs made by the East German secret police, the Stasi, in the 1970s. Meticulously overlaying the various plans and studying the corresponding photographs enabled Neubauer to create a digital 3D image of how the bunker would have looked although he "had to guess on the colours."Most previous presentations of Hitler's lair, Neubauer says, seem "frighteningly superficial." The proportions are wrong, the ceiling height is off, the doors and airlocks falsely positioned. In the film "Downfall," the Führer and his henchmen are seen to be living in a dank, dark cavern with concrete walls, water seeping through the floors and surrounded by poor lighting, an image widely believed "not because it is true, but because that is how Germans want to continue to imagine Hitler's end. I understand the need to do that, but it's not how things looked."

The Reich Cabinet Meeting Room: The Reich cabinet meeting room was renovated between 1875-1878 by Wilhelm Neumann on behalf of Bismarck and looked as seen here until its destruction in 1944. The only novelty was the 1934-1935 implement refurbishment by Paul Ludwig Troost.

Left: The Exit Of The Vorbunker: The exit of the Vorbunker was located opposite the elevator. It is likely that this exit was used as a second entrance to the Vorbunker. While the residents of the Old Reich Chancellery used the main entrance to the Vorbunker, at the same time the residents of northern extension could enter the Vorbunker through the air lock of this bunker exit. Centre:The Engine Room: The technical heart of the Vorbunker. The generator was able to provide power for the bunker even during a power failure. Left in the picture shown are the 4 air filters of the bunker filter system. Only after filtering the air through these filters, it was then possible to distribute the air through the ventilation openings into the rooms of the bunker.Right: Reception Hall and Vorbunker / Cut: The air raid shelter and the reception hall were designed to form a static symbiosis. The shelter, with its thick concrete ceiling, formed a solid foundation for the marble columns in the reception hall. These columns reached 50 cm downward through the air cushion beneath the reception hall floor, resting directly on the bunker ceiling. The placement of the pillars was also determined by the layout of the shelter. Each pillar was placed squarely on top of an intersection between two bunker walls. The extra pressure bearing down on these intersections added strength and stability to the air raid shelter.

Left: The Basement Of The Reception Hall: The basement rooms were connected by passages on the eastern and western sides of the shelter. These could be used as escape routes, should it become necessary to evacuate the bunker in an emergency. The rooms and passages that surrounded the shelter also had another function. They created a space between the exterior walls of the building, and the bunker itself. This offered additional protection, as bombs which hit the construction from the side would explode in this space, before reaching the air raid shelter itself. Centre: The Staircase To The Basement Of The Reception Hall: East of the winter garden was the staircase, which linked the basement of the reception hall directly to the “Fuehrer's Apartment”. The entire northern part of the Old Reich Chancellery was called “Fuehrer's Apartment”, including the dining room and the winter garden. Directly opposite the staircase was the main entrance to the Vorbunker. Right: The Emergency Exit Of The Vorbunker: In the western area of the basement, one can recognise the air cushion of the reception hall above. On the right is the western outer wall of the bunker recognisable on which stood the western pillars of the reception hall. The garden façade of the reception hall rested on the basement wall to the left. This picture shows the emergency exit of Vorbunker fenced by a railing. This exit was only used as an emergency and it remained closed at all times.

The last photographs of Hitler alive as he inspects the damage made to the Chancellery. Beside him stands his personal adjutant Julius Schaub. The photograph was taken by the same photographer who took the one of Hitler inspecting the Hitlerjugend in the Reichschancellery garden on April 20, 1945. The latter photo shown re-enacted to form the basis of promotional poster for Der Untergang. During the air raids on Berlin, the Neue Reichskanzlei was only slightly damaged until the end of the war. After the conquest of Berlin the Soviet troops captured one of the Reichsadlers, a bronze work of Kurt Schmid-Ehmen from the Reichskanzlei which can be seen today at the Imperial War Museum after the British were given it by the Soviets in 1946. One of the central symbols of the power of Hitler was the dismantled building complex of the New and Old Reich Chancellery and the Palais Borsig from 1949 to 1953 under orders of the Soviet Control Commission. After 1945 in the DDR, the use of saline marble (a red limestone and a petrographic sense not a genuine marble) was used and it was reported that floor and wall claddings of the New Reich Chancellery were reused for the foyers of the Humboldt University and the Old Palais, the Mohrenstraße underground station and the Soviet memorials at Treptow Park, Tiergarten and Schönholzer Heide although there is no direct proof for this. Roberto Rossellini's 1947 film Deutschland im Jahre Null have scenes in the ruins of the New Reichskanzlei in which it can be seen that the floor coverings have already been removed in the area of ​​the Marmorgalerie. During the foundation work for new buildings on the corner of Vossstraße and Ebertstrasse, the fragments of former window sections or roof cornices were recovered in February 2008. Today a panel of the Foundation's Topography of Terror recalls the building. The subsoil was rebuilt with multi-storey flat construction in the DDR era. In the street corner of the ground floor is now a Chinese restaurant.

The ruins of the Reich Chancellery where Hitler's and Eva Braun's bodies were cremated. Recreation of Speer surveying the remains of his work and final battle outside the chancellery in Der Untergang

July 9, 1941 and July 12, 1946

The bronze statue of Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin at Zietenplatz in front of the Reich Chancellery and today with my students.

The Reich Chancellery was almost bare. Paintings, tapestries and furniture had been removed. There were huge cracks in the ceilings, smashed windows were boarded up and plywood partitions concealed the worst of the bomb damage. (94)[On Hitler's last birthday] Goring, Ribbentrop, Donitz, Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, Speer, Keitel, Jodl and Krebs were driven to the Reich Chancellery before noon. There, they trooped through the huge rooms faced in polished marble, with doors almost to the ceiling. This quasi-cinematic monument to conspicuous power now looked tawdry in its half-wrecked state, yet it remained deeply sinister. (301)

The red granite flooring was being removed by the soviets to built their war memorial in Treptower Park.

The garden portal in 1939 showing one of the twin "Walking Horses" by Josef Thorak, upon which Hitler gazed from the offices of his New Chancellery building, and now, just rediscovered.

The site then and in the aftermath of the war. The monumental horse sculptures and granite
reliefs by sculptors Josef Thorak and Arno Breker were lost the year the Berlin Wall fell have now been found, police said in a
statement. German police in May 2015 said they had found the long-lost masterpieces, commissioned by the Third Reich, in a warehouse after staging 10 raids in five states targeting eight suspected members, aged 64 to 79, of a ring of illegal art dealers. Bild newspaper reported that the illicit art dealers had in recent years asked for up to four million euros on the black market for the works, which have survived a turbulent odyssey. As the war turned against Nazi Germany and bombs hailed down on Berlin, the sculptures were evacuated to a town east of the capital which in 1945 was occupied by victorious Russian forces. The horses resurfaced around 1950 on the sports grounds of a Red Army barracks in the nearby town of Eberswalde in what was then the communist German Democratic Republic (DDR). There they would stay for some 38 years, and time took its toll. Bild reported that the horses were painted over in gold, damaged by bullets and had their tails broken and inexpertly reaffixed. Sometimes children played on them. Decades on, an art historian discovered the horses and wrote a newspaper article about them, published in early 1989. Within weeks, they were gone -- likely sold off by the DDR regime, which was then in its final throes and in desperate need of hard cash. The "Walking Horses", having vanished for a quarter century, were found Wednesday May 20 in a warehouse in Bad Duerkheim, in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Bild report said that, while they will now likely become the property of the German state, it was also possible that descendants of their creator Thorak could launch a legal claim for them.

The site immediately after the war and the same view summer, 2007- a row of flats.

The entrance courtyard and main entrance to Hitler's Reich's Chancellery. The building was meant to intimidate foreign guests with the entrance flanked by Arno Breker’s two monumental figures he had titled Torch Bearer and Sword Bearer. As the denazification officials noted after the war in the artist's favour, the sculptures were renamed by Hitler after their submission, becoming known as The Party and Wehrmacht, respectively, thereby giving them a political meaning that the artist had not intended. In any event, Alfred Rosenberg thought that his “monumental figures [were] a representation of
the ‘force and willpower’ of the age.” Robert Scholz thought they "stood at the beginning of a new politically determined
epoch, because it could embody most immediately the intended rejuvenation of the world. . . . Arno Breker’s sculptural works are symbols of
the dignity and creative drive that is at the basis of the political idea of
National Socialism.” In addition to the heroic statues for the New Reich Chancellery, forty-two of his works appeared in the
eight Great German Art Exhibitions (GDK) held annually in Munich, where the regime exhibited officially sanctioned art.

His works,
according to a later critic, “glorified the racial struggle, they were symbolic stone piles of Aryan beliefs.” They were “a beatification of ‘militarism’ and ‘racial soundness’ based on the struggle against and even
liquidation of all things not beautiful.” Another scholar noted, “While
it was the function of cartoonists to circulate a negative picture of ‘inferior’ races, the art of Breker and Thorak provided, perfected and emphasized a positive image of a Nordic super-race within a scheme of
classicizing representation. Stürmer-caricature and Breker sculpture
cannot be separated from one another. They were both equally and
simultaneously promoted because they endorsed and illustrated racist
policy.” Jost Hermand took this idea to its conclusion, observing,
“National Socialist art is thus not unproblematically ‘beautiful,’ not
merely devoted to perfect forms and empty content; it is also eminently
brutal, an art based on convictions which, when realized, literally left
corpses in their wake.”

The two statues, with me standing beside Sword Bearer now in a different location

Fritz Todt's funeral in February, 1942

Before and after the war

More images of the destruction from Savelii Vasilevich IAmshchikov's book Vozvratu Ne Podlezhit!: Trofei Vtoroi Mirovoi

Mohrenstrasse Underground station

Mohrenstrasse underground station with the Reichschancellery in the background during the war and in the summer of 2007, looking towards the opposite direction with an attempt to Photoshop the site with me today and at the turn of the century.

The original station designed by Alfred Grenander opened on 1 October 1908 on the new branch from Potsdamer Platz to Spittelmarkt. It was then called Kaiserhof after a nearby grand hotel on the Wilhelmplatz square. It was rebuilt in the course of the 1936 Summer Olympics and severely damaged in World War II.

When East Berlin fell under communist administration after the Second World War, the Wilhelmplatz square as well as the station were renamed on 18 August 1950 to Thälmannplatz, after the communist leader Ernst Thälmann. With the erection of the Berlin Wall from 13 August 1961, the line ceased to run between East and West Berlin and the station became the terminus of the line in East Berlin. As in the 1980s the square was overbuilt by a housing estate and the Czechoslovak embassy, the station on 15 April 1986 was renamed Otto-Grotewohl-Straße, the name of the Wilhelmstraße at that time, after the politician Otto Grotewohl. On 3 October 1991, following German reunification, the station was renamed Mohrenstraße. The line was reconnected on 13 November 1993 and simultaneously reconfigured, forming a new U2 line between Vinetastraße in the east and Ruhleben in the west.

The red marble inside comes directly from the Mosaics Hall in the Reich Chancellery courtesy of the Red Army

Now, after the destruction caused by the Anglo-American air-raids, the cannon shots of the Russians and the subsequent demolition and removal of the rest during the immediate post-war years, only the marble used for restructuring the subway station "Mohrenstrasse" remain as a witness to pretensions of the Chancellery. These residual plates of marble, together with the few lamp-posts still working not far away, are the only remains of the vision dreamt, projected and realised by Albert Speer and his patron Adolf Hitler.

Since the bunker below the groundwater level was Berlin, remote bombings felt it very strongly. It constantly running pumps abpumpten penetrating groundwater. The bunker was self-sufficient, had its own supply of fresh air, which was equipped with filter cartridges against poison gas. To power a generator with diesel drive was available, the operation caused a high noise level in the bunker. [2] The equipment in the bunker was spartan at the request of Hitler, was dispensed with paneling and the like. Each bunker sections were separated by gas-tight steel doors, based on the inputs SS guards of the escort party leader (FBK) position, visitors examined on weapons. Visitors had to give up their weapons. Hitler withdrew on 16 January 1945 in the Führerbunker back when the situation in the aboveground Chancellery was dangerous by the Allied air raids. With him his inner staff, his aides, the guide accompanying command and Martin Bormann moved into position. Eva Braun drove in February 1945 from Munich to Berlin and moved into the bunker next to Hitler's room two rooms. Finally, in April was followed by Joseph and Magda Goebbels and their children. April 29, 1945. Hitler wrote his political and personal Testament here. Then married Hitler and Eva Braun and took on 30 April 1945 the life. Their bodies were burned with gasoline. The next day, on May 1, also Joseph and Magda Goebbels committed suicide after their children had been killed by cyanide initially. On May 2, General Helmuth Weidling declared the surrender of Berlin; The Red Army also occupied the bunker. After the Second World War After the Second World War, the Red Army tried to blow up the bunker, but had no success. With the demolition of the New Reich Chancellery and the emergency exit and the adjacent single tower for the supply of fresh air in the garden of the Reich Chancellery were eliminated, the resulting exposed underground complex was covered with a layer of soil. During the first post-war new construction of large plate apartment buildings on the west side of the former Otto-Grotewohl-Straße (today: Wilhelmstrasse) the reinforced concrete ceiling of the bunker were removed in the years 1988/1989 and filled the remaining cavities. Due to the high demolition costs remain bottom plate and exterior walls in the ground. The position of the plant is / marked with an information board at the corner Gertrud Kolmar Street to Ministergärten which were prepared by the Association of Berlin Underworlds shortly before the World Cup on 8 June 2006, in order to prevent the creation of myths. At the Reich Chancellery and the bunker reminded of the corner Wilhelm / Voßstraße a panel of Topography of Terror Foundation. In the area of ​​the bunker are today a small restaurant and a supermarket, the emergency exit of the bunker in the former garden of the Reich Chancellery is now built over a parking space.

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